You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
No. 1 on Amazon
As of Monday morning, a picture book written by Vice President Mike Pence’s daughter — a story of the family’s pet rabbit that teaches children about the office of the vice president — is ranked No. 15 among books on Amazon. In the No. 1 spot was another book about the same rabbit, but in this case Marlon Bundo is educating readers about his same-sex marriage, thanks to a “Last Week Tonight” parody of the book reflecting the vice president’s positions on gay rights, with all proceeds benefiting The Trevor Project. [CNN]
4 bombs
Another package bomb, the fourth in three weeks placed in the Austin, Texas area, went off Sunday, injuring two people. The first three of the previous bombs targeted people of color from prominent African American and Hispanic households. [Digg]
80 false applications
The Housing Rights Initiative found the Kushner Cos. filed at minimum 80 false applications in 34 buildings in New York from 2013 to 2016. Each indicated there weren’t any rent regulated tenants, despite records indicating more than 300 such units. It’s part of alleged practices of the president’s son-in-law’s company to force out residents so properties can be resold for profit. [The Associated Press]
1,005,000 children
In 2010, the U.S. Census undercounted the number of children aged 0 to 4 by approximately 1,005,000 kids. The why of this is mysterious, but make no mistake the Census knows they’re missing them; there were 21,120,000 births in the five years leading up to the census, 240,000 immigrants aged 0-4 and 154,000 death records meaning about 21,206,000 children 0-4, but the 2010 Census only counted 20,201,000 children. So where’s our missing million, and how much is that number going to rise in 2020? [FiveThirtyEight]
50 million
This past weekend we learned that Cambridge Analytica, a voter profiling company working for the campaign of President Trump, harvested 50 million Facebook user profiles, and the reaction from users and the market has been swift; Facebook stock has began to tank in the past several days, and Facebook’s chief information security officer, Alex Stamos, who has advocated that Facebook disclose Russian activity on the service, said Monday he will leave the company. [The New York Times, Reuters]
$25 billion
That’s the value of needed repairs in the 176,000 apartment units overseen by NYCHA, New York’s public housing authority which is the largest such system in the country. That’s a crisis level, and up from $6 billion in needed repairs in 2005. [The Wall Street Journal]
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